Windy City Blows Cold on WiFi

Only two months after promising to press ahead with plans to construct a city-wide WiFi network, Chicago City officials have pulled the plug on the whole scheme. The news came after elected representatives faced strong criticism following the admission that the bold scheme had fallen behind schedule.

The plan to provide a WiFi grid across the sprawling mid-western metropolis offering high-speed, low-cost, wireless internet access to all citizens has now failed despite long and hard negotiations with three companies: AT&T, EarthLink and new company NextWLAN. Yesterday, the Chicago City Council issued a press statement saying that talks with the companies had failed to result in a workable business plan.

According to reports, the council had demanded that the companies should shoulder the burden of upfront costs in exchange for "free" access to city-owned lamp-posts and power supply. In the press release, Chicago's Chief Technology Officer, Hardik Bhatt, said simply, "When neither organization could justify a business case for the type of partnership outlined in our proposal, we realized - after much consideration - that we need to re-evaluate our approach to provide universal and affordable access to high speed Internet as part of the City's broader digital inclusion efforts."

The City's plans had not been without their critics, and some saw the proposed roll-out as too aggressive. Certainly other municipalities in the US and elsewhere have found the reality of installing city-centre networks more expensive and technically complex than originally estimated.

As Bhatt admitted in the statement "In Chicago and in many other cities, a municipal WiFi network was initially envisioned as a way to provide cheaper, high-speed access to consumers, but given the rapid pace of changing technology, in just two short years, the marketplace has altered significantly."

According to US researchers, In-Stat, the wireless mesh market will in fact see growth decline after peaking next year. The company said in a recent report that 2009 will bring rapidly declining growth rates for the market. In-Stat says, "Cities will continue to deploy municipal mesh networks, but the rate of new deployments after 2008 will slow, due to concerns over the business model."

The company believes that WiMax and cellular technologies will present WiFi with intense competition since both WiMax and cellular tend to target the same nomadic users as WiFi networks do.